Wednesday, September 9, 2009

now this is the way it was supposed to be

The Dealio: Set in the midyears of WWII, QT messes with history and -a bit- with your mind, in a simple boy-meets-girl tale. Except that the girl is a chameleon with a taste for fire and irony, the boy is a nationally known, and feared, Nazi officer whose job it is to hunt down and obliterate Jewish families who have successfully gone underground and out of range for the usual methods of elimination. Add in the usual Tarentino touches: 40's featurette style fonts and spotlights, eccentric, but totally workable musical selections, violence of high and exotic varieties, and a bit of historical fact-bending. Hey, it's his story, not history, folks. If this is something that sounds really repulsive to you, you are clearly not a fan. Go see GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. However, if you have been waiting with truculence and barely concealed impatience for this thing to hit the screen, you have probably already seen this one. The smooth performances and barely-hidden glee of righting (writing?) an historical wrong, and finally bringing justice to bear, was very appealing to me. And, of course, the ever-present tongue-in-cheek attitude towards even the tiniest nuance of the tale was rivetting to witness. Question for Q: Is it actually possible that Landa (Waltz, as the aforementioned Nazi officer) was present at more places in Europe than the entire Easy Company (Just asking as a die hard fan of BOB)? Man, that guy's like the energiser bunny. But don't worry too much about what happens to him....

The Grading Session: 4.9 stars out of 5. Gonna knock 0.1 of a smidgen off for the length of the film, which I felt was unnecessary, but only because the 'card game' went on far too long. For Quentin fans, this is the banquet at the end of a very long, hard fast. Wherever will his subversive little mind prowl next?

Lessons Learned: Never underestimate the power of really motivated, inventive people bent on revenge. Oh, wait, this too: sometimes, taking off the uniform does not provide one with a free pass from the past one thought it would. Word.